The invention relates to the technical sector of capping apparatus for bottles.
The prior art describes bottles which are hooked by gripping means, associated to a transporter which enables the advancing of the bottles from a filling station, in which they are filled with products, for example liquids, granular and/or powder materials, towards a station in which capping apparatus are provided.
A known capping apparatus is constituted by: supply channels, arranged inclined transversally to the advancement direction of the transporter and, therefore, to the bottles, to each of which caps are conveyed to identify a row, where the leading cap strikes against a striker such as to stabilize a position thereof above an extractor, with the body of the cap facing upwards; a receiving and positioning arm, hinged at an end thereof to a base and exhibiting at another end thereof a through-hole for receiving.
The receiving and positioning arm takes on: a receiving position, in which the hole is axial with the head cap of the row of caps and with the extractor that when activated enables insertion of the body of the leading cap into the hole in the end of the arm; an expulsion position, in which the arm, rotated by 180°, brings the cap to above the inlet mouth of the bottle, with the body of the cap facing downwards, coaxially thereto; known pusher organs, also axial with the inlet mouth of the bottle, push the cap downwards, disengaging it from the end of the arm and inserting it in the mouth of the bottle to close it.
With the transporter step-activated, “n” bottles (for example two, three, four bottles) are contemporaneously operated-on; this leads to contemporary capping of one or more bottles.
To cap a group of n bottles there must be n supply channels, n receiving and positioning arms and the same number of extractor organs and pusher organs, with all the drawbacks that derive from the functional complexity of the apparatus and the maintenance of the cap positioning and bottle closing devices.
The above-described capping apparatus exhibits drawbacks deriving from the number of bottles to be capped: for each bottle to be capped a supply channel, a receiving and positioning arm and corresponding extractor and pusher organs must be included.